<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>From the Ashes by weakinteraction</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22591630">From the Ashes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction'>weakinteraction</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Deaths in Alternate Timeline, Multi, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 13:48:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,732</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22591630</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In a universe where Dark Phoenix went slightly differently, the X-Men find themselves with only one desperate throw of the dice left open to them.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jean Grey/Peter Maximoff/Scott Summers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Past Imperfect Future Unknown 2019</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>From the Ashes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts">VampirePaladin</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They hide in a cave, here at the end of it all.  These few who are left of the next step in human evolution, reduced to living like their most distant human forebears.</p>
<p>Not quite, though.  They have their abilities, and some small scraps of technology.  They are living in reduced circumstances, but refuse to be reduced to savagery.</p>
<p>Jean walks among them.</p>
<p>Scott, carefully tending Logan's stasis tank.  Jean peers in at his features, almost serene.  Scott is anything but.  "If we can't get more cryofluid ..." he begins, but then gives up.  The slow deterioriation of the tank is measured in weeks that they can no longer allow themselves to believe they have.</p>
<p>Peter, almost preternaturally still, as though holding himself in check, conserving his energy for the final battle.  "How is that you're the only one of us that doesn't look any older?" Jean asks him, desperate to try to regain some sense of normality.  "When you're the one who's experienced the most time passing, subjectively?"</p>
<p>"Must be my metabolism," he replies casually.</p>
<p>"Well, yes, I suppose I know all about that," Jean says with a smile.  "And so do you, Scott."</p>
<p>"Careful now," Scott says.  "There's no privacy here."</p>
<p>Yukio giggles, for form's sake.  She and Negasonic Early Middle Age Warhead are huddled in the corner, swapping stories of their glory days as though they were old women in a retirement home, not mutants in the prime of life, each seeking to keep their own morale up in the guise of seeking to do so for each other.</p>
<p>Jamie sleeps, fitfully, extra copies of him almost but not quite ready to burst forth in response to whatever is happening in his dreams.</p>
<p>And in the centre of it all, the Professor, his gaze constantly, inevitably drawn to the cut-down Cerebro helmet that gathers dust in the corner.</p>
<p>He and Jean have both tried it over these last few weeks, despite the risk of detection by the world authorities -- or what passes for them in these times -- from its psychic backwash.  They have given up because there are no more mutants left.</p>
<p>The bright lights have gone out one by one.  Many have died resisting capture or "cure", but a great deal more have been forcibly made <i>less</i>.  The propaganda broadcasts for the remaining human population portray the "reintegration centres" as a humane solution to the problem of ex-mutants who refuse to assimilate back into what passes for mainstream society in these times.  But the X-Men know them for what they are: enormous prison camps.  No one is ever allowed to leave, however much they "embrace humanity", however much they say that they wish they had never been born with the X-gene.  Some of them, Jean is devastatingly certain, end up doing so sincerely.  But while any mutants remain free anywhere, the authorities will not take the risk of allowing possible sympathisers back into an already strained social fabric, fracturing at the seams.</p>
<p>That is how she knows they will be coming.</p>
<p>But the X-gene itself will not be going anywhere, she knows.  Hank's final papers made that clear enough -- it will keep on manifesting itself in each new generation, as long as humans keep producing new generations.  No journal would publish the findings; in the end, Dr. Rao posted them on the open web, defying those who had twisted her work into a weapon; copies still proliferate peer-to-peer but they are long since purged from the search results.  That was after they had come for Hank himself, making no pretence at attempting a cure in his case.  Shortly after that, Kavita, in her turn, simply disappeared.</p>
<p>Perhaps it was all inevitable, each step laid out in front of them, simply waiting for their footprints to fill them.  En Sabah Nur had taught the world that the history of mutantkind stretched back far further than any had imagined, the fear that he thrived on spreading even after his demise.  But it was the D'Bari War that had been the real turning point.  Jean felt the same stab of regret that she always did when she considered those events: the moment of weakness in which she had allowed Vuk to take the Phoenix from her.  She had been close to death in the aftermath; it was only Scott and the Professor who had managed to keep her alive.</p>
<p>The cosmic force had rejected its new host, departing once more into the universe on its intertwined path of destruction and creation, any consciousness it possessed in that form utterly unknowable to any on Earth.  But in the brief time before it did, Vuk had devastated entire continents, and boiled a good fraction of the oceans.  In the aftermath, her followers had determined that they must make the Earth their new homeworld.</p>
<p>Once the war was won, at further terrible cost, the authorities, now all-too-used to seeking out those among them who looked human, determined that there must be no more mutants.  And emboldened with the research into the "cure" -- the bitter irony that the original work had been done by Hank himself was the final twist of the knife -- they even thought that they had a way to do so that would not enrage popular opinion against them.  In her darker moments, Jean knows that popular opinion would not have been all that enraged if they had used less subtle methods.</p>
<p>She cannot help but read the fear in the minds of everyone in the cave, for it is so perfect a reflection of her own: that all their struggles have achieved is to postpone their own meeting with the same binary choice of fates -- kill or cure -- and that they have already failed -- and indeed they have; the X-Men of the past would have long since staged the prison break to end all prison breaks, rescued their brothers and sisters, accepted them as such even if they were no longer mutants.</p>
<p>The rain outside has not stopped for days, cutting them off completely from the outside world.  Perhaps the storm is the only reason they have not yet been discovered.  Jean allows herself to wonder for a moment: perhaps <i>Storm</i> is the only reason they have not yet been discovered.  Exactly what happened to Ororo in that aerial battle remains unclear, but perhaps the calamitous thunderclap that downed twenty-five HC drones and seemed to consume her did something more: transfigured her into some animating spirit of the world's weather systems, still watching over them in her new form, a true weather goddess in the end.</p>
<p>The Professor smiles at her.  He has picked up the thought in her mind, and is wishing that he could believe it too.  But Jean doesn't need to touch his mind with hers to know what he is thinking: that if Ororo's mind still exists within the swirling storm, one or both of them ought to be able to detect it.</p>
<p>There is a faint chirp from the console at the back of the cave.  Yukio gets up wearily to check it: there have been false readings once every few hours, patterns of lightning flashes in the storm that the primitive algorithms flag as potentially hostile.</p>
<p>But Yukio is silent too long.  Negasonic goes to see.  "They're coming," she says quietly after glancing at the readouts herself.  "Four helicarriers, and who knows what on board them."</p>
<p>The Professor glides over to Scott. "Time to wake him," he says, his voice barely a croak.</p>
<p>Scott nods, quickly and efficiently keying the sequence of activation codes.</p>
<p>Logan received a dose in Reykjavik last year, another doomed not-quite-last stand, evacuating the McTaggert Institute from its new home when the UN forces finally decided that violating Iceland's neutrality was worth the cost.  Unique even among mutants, his healing factor has been able to fight off the cure, but it is a losing battle.  They have kept him on ice in one of Hank's final creations, eking out the time he has left so that he can make the best use of it.  But now, there is no time left for any of them.</p>
<p>Scott helps Logan out of the tank when it opens.  She can see in his mind that he has a hundred questions, but also that he knows that the mere fact of their having woken him makes them irrelevant.</p>
<p>"I founded the X-Men because I believed in peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants--" the Professor begins.</p>
<p>"And I founded the Brotherhood because I knew full well this day would come," comes a voice from the cave entrance, loud but not shouting, perfectly clear against the constant deafening drumbeat of the rain.  "But I don't think it matters any more which of us was right."</p>
<p>"My old friend," the Professor says, a warmth in his voice that hasn't been there for some time.</p>
<p>"My old enemy," Magneto replies, equally warmly, as he crosses the cave in a few firm strides to accept the hug offered by Xavier's outstretched arms.</p>
<p>Peter is standing next to them.  Jean watches carefully to see what will happen next, and she can tell that Scott is doing the same.  Erik nods at him, not a warm gesture, but not a cold one either.  Better than some reunions they've had over the years.  A lot of water has flowed under that particular bridge, and Jean and Scott have been there for all of it.</p>
<p>"We thought--" the Professor says.</p>
<p>Magneto follows Xavier's gaze to the Cerebro helmet, and in reply simply taps his own.</p>
<p>"Why are you here?" Peter demands.</p>
<p>"An excellent question, indeed," Erik says, apparently sincerely.  "I'm here because we have been here before."  Suddenly, the burning intensity of his gaze falls exclusively on Logan.  "Not that any of us remember it except for you."</p>
<p>"It wasn't the same," Logan says.  "The details--"</p>
<p>"What are we talking about here?" Scott asks, just as lost as everyone else.</p>
<p>"Time travel," Jean says, reading Xavier's mind.  He has kept these memories walled off from her for all this time, but now they come spilling forth, unbelievable and yet utterly real.  Another world, gone wrong in another way.  Logan sent back, mentally, into the body of his past self, to try to put it right.  Apparently succeeding, if only for a while.</p>
<p>"Is that even possible?" Scott asks.</p>
<p>"The important question is whether it is possible now," Erik says.</p>
<p>"We had Kitty," Logan puts in.  They all pause for a moment, remembering her sacrifice.  "She never even got the chance to develop that secondary mutation in this world.  And we had me.  A me who was able to withstand the rigours of being mentally projected back by decades."</p>
<p>"Yes, yes, that won't work in the slightest," Erik says.  "Not now.  But--"  Suddenly, he claps Peter on the shoulder.  "This time we have another way."</p>
<p>Jean stares at Peter intently, as does everyone else.  "Me?" he says.</p>
<p>"It became clear to me some time ago that mutantkind was lost," Erik says.  "And so I began my research.  At first, I thought to try to trigger what we knew was Miss Pryde's latent secondary mutation, but her nobility put paid to that.  So I had to look to other methods."</p>
<p>"I can run fast, don't get me wrong," Peter says.  "So fast that it seems as though time slows nearly to nothing.  But I can't make it run <i>backwards</i>."</p>
<p>"Not alone, no," Erik says, "but I believe that--"  He stops again, and suddenly, unexpectedly, he is removing his helmet.  "Read my mind, Charles.  You too, Miss Grey, if you want.  See if you think I'm right.  And if I am--"</p>
<p>But Jean is already projecting herself into his mind.  She can feel Charles there too.  She can see the barriers Erik has put up, trying to avoid them prying into things he would not wish them to.  But they are irrelevant, compared to the complexity of his plan.</p>
<p>He has been busy, in his self-imposed exile since the UN came for Genosha.  Has refined his abilities to the subatomic scale, and beyond.  The master of magnetism has made himself able to use magnetic fields to tease apart the very stuff of space-time itself.</p>
<p>"It could work," Jean says.  "Charles, I really think it could work."</p>
<p>The psychic contact ends and they are back in the cave again.  "I agree," Charles says.  "I mean, it's insane, but then what scheme of yours isn't?"</p>
<p>"Someone want to catch us up?" Three of Jamie are standing together, looking rather nonplussed.</p>
<p>"If Peter runs fast enough--" the Professor says.</p>
<p>"Faster than you've ever run before," Jean says.  "A lot faster."</p>
<p>"Once his speed is sufficient, if Erik can craft a wormhole around him ..."</p>
<p>"Magneto can do that now?" Scott says.</p>
<p>"I can," comes the reply.</p>
<p>"OK, just checking."</p>
<p>"Perhaps I always could," Erik goes on, "and I just needed the motivation to discover it."</p>
<p>Jean thinks back to that dark time, when Magneto allowed himself to become one of En Sabah Nur's "horsemen".  His ability to manipulate the magnetic field of the whole Earth had been grand and terrifying enough.  "If the wormhole is made just right," Jean says, "and I mean <i>pinpoint</i> precision, it should sustain itself just long enough for Peter to run through it."</p>
<p>"And then what?"</p>
<p>"When you arrive in the past, you find me," the Professor says.  "Explain it all to me, let me see it in your mind.  That's what happened with Logan, after all."</p>
<p>"Oh yes, it was simple," Logan says with heavy sarcasm.</p>
<p>"So exactly <i>how many</i> times has this happened?" Peter asks.  "How many different do-overs have we given ourselves?"  He looks around.  "Oh come on, you were <i>all</i> thinking it."</p>
<p>"What if it always ends like this?" Negasonic says, the gloom she mostly used to affect now seeming very genuine.</p>
<p>"We cannot know," Charles says.  "But we <i>must</i> try."</p>
<p>"Is this what the X-Men are for, then?" Erik says at last.  "To stand here at the end of it all and say 'No'?"</p>
<p>Professor Xavier glides forward on his chair.  "To say that there is another way," he says forcefully.  "A <i>better</i> way."  He holds out an arm to his oldest friend and greatest rival.  "You were there at the start of it all, Erik.  You were one of the first of the X-Men.  What do <i>you</i> say?"</p>
<p>"I say 'No, there must be a better way'.  And I say, '<i>Run</i>, my son'."</p>
<p>Peter breaks into a smile that the situation doesn't deserve.  Jean glances across at Scott, who is just as pleased as she is to see this reconciliation.</p>
<p>"Drones detected at the perimeter," Yukio says quietly.</p>
<p>Charles speaks into all their minds at once.  <i>I am so, so proud of all of you.  Now fight.  Fight for everything.</i></p>
<p>As they rush out, the Professor is guiding them telepathically so that they work together to best effect, the readouts in the cave giving him far more information than any one of them can make out individually in the driving rain about the enemy forces.</p>
<p>At first they are successful, their co-ordinated tactics making short work of the first waves of the assault.</p>
<p>"Will they never learn?" Erik asks, jubilant, as he twists an entire wing of buzzing drones into scrap metal, and then forges them into projectiles that he sends back towards the ones coming behind them.</p>
<p>"They <i>do</i> think you're dead," Logan returns, as he stabs upwards, his adamantium claws slicing straight through one that got through.</p>
<p>But they know that they are only trying to buy time.  Time for Peter, so that he can buy time for the whole world.  Around, between and through them all he runs, getting faster and faster, so that the blur of his motion becomes a ribbon weaving together the X-Men.</p>
<p>Jean feels Scott next to her, forming up close.  Each ruby-red blast from his eyes takes encompasses dozens, hundreds of drones, which fall out of the sky, electronic systems fried, outer surfaces ablated.</p>
<p>There is a pause.  Jean cannot sense the minds of the humans directing the attack from afar, but she can still imagine what is happening: the resistance is heavier than expected.  A new strategy is needed.</p>
<p>"You really think he can do this?" Scott asks her, indicating the striated ribbon of light that is all they can see of Peter.</p>
<p>"No one else can even try," Jean replies.  "Have faith in him."</p>
<p>"He's not the one I don't have faith in," Scott says darkly.</p>
<p>"I saw inside his mind, Scott.  He's quite genuine about all this.  He believes he can do it."</p>
<p>Any further discussion is curtailed when, suddenly, Logan staggers backwards from the rough defensive line they have assembled as they wait for the humans' next move.</p>
<p>"Wolverine!" Scott says.  "Form up!"</p>
<p>Logan waves him away.  "Not this time, kid."</p>
<p>Jean puts a hand on his shoulder.  "The cure ..."  It must be taking effect sooner than expected.</p>
<p>"Get back to the cave," Scott says.  "We can--  After this is all over ..."</p>
<p>"There is no 'after'," Logan says.  He looks at the blur that is Peter.  "Only before.  And anyway, there's definitely no after for <i>me</i>.  You think a normal human anatomy can withstand having all this metal inside it?"</p>
<p>And she can see there in his mind his dread of the pain.  He has endured so much of it in his long, long life.  But never like this.  Never inexorably dying from the inside out.</p>
<p>He looks at her, and his eyes are a plea.</p>
<p>She cannot bring herself to do what he wants, but she can do the next best thing.  She touches her hand to his temple and says, "Sleep."</p>
<p>He crumples to the floor instantly.</p>
<p>"Come on," Scott says, "we need to get him back to the cave."</p>
<p>"No time," Negasonic says, gesturing ahead.</p>
<p>And then, Jean hears it: the heavy footfalls, making their own thunder as they come closer.</p>
<p>Sentinels.</p>
<p>"It's always the same," Magneto says, and Jean isn't quite sure what he's talking about.  "Always the same in the end."  He reaches out, his gestures only a focus for his powers, as he tries to tear the metal components out of the first Sentinel.</p>
<p>Nothing happens.</p>
<p>The whole thing must be composed entirely of ceramics, plastics, other materials unaffected by magnetism.  What electronic components are unavoidable must be hardened against magnetic interference.</p>
<p>They may have thought that Magneto was dead, but they were prepared for the possibility that they were wrong.</p>
<p>The Sentinel begins to open its mouth.</p>
<p>Negasonic barrels into Erik, pushing him out of the way of the blast, taking its full force herself, burning away to nothing in an instant.</p>
<p>Erik tries again, but Yukio pulls him away, back to relative safety, as Jean, Scott and two dozen Jamies assault the Sentinel.  "Don't waste her sacrifice," she tells him sternly.  "You're the only one who can do this." And then, with a sudden edge in her voice, "She wouldn't have saved you otherwise, trust me."</p>
<p>Scott is blasting chunks off the Sentinel, but more are coming, surrounding them.  Jean leaves the first one to the others and tries to repel them telekinetically, but they are simply too massive for her powers to have much of an impact.</p>
<p>And through it all, Peter is still running.</p>
<p>"Is he going fast enough yet?" Jean shouts.</p>
<p>Magneto watches helplessly.  "Nearly," he shouts.  "Nearly!"  She can see that his every instinct tells him to join the fight, and it is only his knowledge that Yukio is right that prevents him from doing so.  She seems to have appointed herself his protector, though whether from the Sentinels or from himself, it's hard to say.</p>
<p>Scott leaps forward at the next Sentinel, optic blast shining ahead of him.</p>
<p>The Sentinel bats him away like an insect.</p>
<p>Jean rushes over to him, but it's horribly clear from his twisted, mangled body that he was dead before he even hit the ground.</p>
<p>
  <i>You can bring him back.</i>
</p>
<p>The voice is distant, on the very edge of her awareness, almost impossible to pick out against the tumult of the ongoing battle.  Even as she sweeps aside entire waves of drones with a single burst of telekinetic strength, she is straining to make it out.</p>
<p><i>You can bring them </i>all<i> back.</i></p>
<p>The truth of it hits her like a thousand blasts from the Sentinels at once.  Not just Scott.  Not even just Magneto and Wolverine and the others who are just as doomed.  All of her sisters and brothers.  There is a way.</p>
<p>"Peter!" Jean shouts, as she flings a fresh wave of drones backwards, even as more Sentinels form up in the distance.  Now it really is just a matter of time.</p>
<p>To Peter, the movement of her lips that he has to read must be as slow as glaciers, tiny glimpses seen on each circuit.  And yet he can interpret them perfectly, turning his face towards her each time so that she is left with a blurred impression of his utmost attention, even as she knows that in fact he is impossibly fast, even for him.</p>
<p>"You have to take me with you!" she continues.</p>
<p>Magneto is suddenly concentrating, more than she has ever seen him do in the past.  He is tearing at reality, making the tunnel back to the past for his son.</p>
<p>And then Peter sweeps her up, and everything goes silent.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p><i>She is in Peter's arms, looking for all the world like some clichéd romance novel cover.  Except that he is </i>running<i>, faster than he ever has before.  It's not that she can't feel his mind, it's just that there is nothing there except for the imperative to move, to continue down the tunnel.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>The tunnel crackles electric blue all around them, but there are the vaguest of impressions of a world outside. Everything blurs by so quickly that there is no way to pick out the detail, but Jean has the sense of the rise of civilisation back to the heights it has lost.  Of returning.</i>
</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Eventually, the tunnel collapsed.  Peter slowed to a halt, a feat which took some considerable time, and finally put her down.</p>
<p>"Well," Jean says, "that was undignified."  Something compels her to make light of the situation, as though to do anything else would force her to confront its enormity.</p>
<p>Peter seems to feel the same compulsion.  "What was the alternative?  I should have given you a piggyback?  That was always Scott's speciality, as I recall."</p>
<p>They are silent for a long moment, remembering better times -- horseplay in the grounds. And elsewhere.</p>
<p>"Sorry," Peter says.  "I shouldn't have--  It's too soon."</p>
<p>"We're here to make his sacrifice not be in vain," Jean says determinedly.  "We're here to make it so that he never has to sacrifice himself at all."</p>
<p>"Sure," Peter says.</p>
<p>Jean brushes her hands together, as though washing away the thoughts that threaten to overwhelm them both.  "So, where are we?" she asks.  "<i>When</i> are we?"</p>
<p>"We're back in Westchester," Peter says.  "We had a <i>long</i> way to go to burn off the excess speed, you don't think I could decide exactly where to stop at the end of all that if I wanted to?"</p>
<p>Jean smiles, conceding the point.  "What about the 'when' part?"</p>
<p>"That's a bit trickier," Peter says.</p>
<p>He disappears for a split second, in the way he does.  When he returns, he's carrying a newspaper and two hot dogs.  The remains of several more are spilled down the front of his clothes.</p>
<p>"Not that much trickier, actually," he says, holding out the newspaper.  Jean peers in to see the date as she takes one of the hot dogs.  She doesn't need the date when she sees the final-column story about the <i>Endeavour</i> being prepared for launch.</p>
<p>"It's soon," she says.</p>
<p>"What's soon?"  Peter demands.  "Do you want to maybe explain why I had to carry you all this way?  'Cos I don't mind telling you, it's given me a hell of a crick in my back."</p>
<p>"I know how we're going to fix things," Jean says, simply, calmly.  "I know exactly how."</p>
<p>"Still not an explanation," Peter says around a mouthful of hot dog.</p>
<p>"The Phoenix," Jean says, and now she has his full attention.  "I ... I don't think it ever left me.  Not completely.  Some fragment, some shard of it was left behind.  And it calls out to ... itself."  What she doesn't say is that she thinks now that that's part of how she survived, that it wasn't just his and Scott's intervention.</p>
<p>"OK, that's an explanation.  I still don't understand it, but it's an explanation, I guess.  And you think--"</p>
<p>"Everything will happen as it did."</p>
<p>"Except this time you want to be there too."</p>
<p>"Yes," Jean says.  "I think ... I think <i>something</i> will happen."</p>
<p>"In space?" Peter says.  "Something will happen in space."</p>
<p>"That's right."</p>
<p>"When you say 'something'," Peter says, "what you mean is your ... death."  He pauses, a pause long enough to be especially significant coming from him.  "Are you going to be OK?"</p>
<p>"It's like you said, this is why we're here."</p>
<p>"Is it?  When I took on this mission it seemed a lot easier than that ...  talk to the Professor, let him figure it all out, y'know."</p>
<p>"We saw so many people die, Peter."  <i>Scott,</i> she doesn't say.  "I ... please trust me, I just know we can bring them back.  But not if we change what's going to happen."</p>
<p>Peter nods minutely. "Right, so we steal the--"</p>
<p>"No, we have to get there some other way.  The others will need the X-jet."</p>
<p>"When you say 'the others', you mean ... us.  The other us."</p>
<p>Jean nods.</p>
<p>"Look, sweetheart, I hate to break it to you, but I can't run in thin air. I'm not Kitty."</p>
<p>Jean is struck again by a fresh wave of memories.</p>
<p>Peter can see her distress.  "How old is Kitty? The Kitty of this time, I mean?" he goes on, before Jean can recite exactly how old she was at her death. "Maybe two?  She's a toddler.  A tiny little girl who's playing with ... I mean, OK, it's Kitty, she can probably already do long division.  But my point is, her future doesn't exist yet.  Like you said, <i>that's why we're here.</i>"</p>
<p>"You're right," Jean says, resolve stiffening.  "You're right."</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>They spend the next day and a half preparing, a process that would be frantic if not for Peter's ability to get them anywhere in the world effectively instantaneously.  Jean has never spent quite so much time in his arms at once before, but without Scott there the oddly romantic undertone is bittersweet at best.</p>
<p>Perhaps that's why she gets him to take her back to where they first arrived.</p>
<p>"I thought we were supposed to be staying clear of the mansion," Peter says.</p>
<p>"I know.  But ..."  She takes his hand in hers.  "I just wanted to see this."</p>
<p>They hear voices, laughing.</p>
<p>As the other versions of them pass, feet away, Jean reaches out to shield her and Peter's minds from her younger self's senses.  Decades more experience means that slipping out of her perceptions is easy enough, so long as the Jean native to this time period doesn't know that there's anything there to look for.  The earlier Scott and Peter's minds are even easier to cloud, leaving them unaware that there's anything amiss.</p>
<p>That moment, though, of touching Scott's mind, is heartbreaking.</p>
<p>"They can't see us, right?" Peter says in an exaggerated whisper.</p>
<p>"Right."</p>
<p>"Is that a time travel thing or a Jean Grey thing?"</p>
<p>"The latter," she says, smiling slightly.</p>
<p>"You were wrong," Peter says, elbowing her.  "I do look older than that."</p>
<p>"All that means is that you finally let Scott dress you."</p>
<p>"Hey, I was <i>down</i> with the spandex," Peter says.</p>
<p>"That's not what I meant and you know it."</p>
<p>They watch as their past selves walk through the grounds, laughing, gently flirting with one another.  After a while, Jean feels Peter put his hand in hers, and holds it tight in return.</p>
<p>"I miss him," Peter says eventually.  "I mean, I knew I was going to, but I didn't expect it to be like <i>this</i>."</p>
<p>"We're going to save him," Jean says.  "We're going to save all of them.  We're going to do what the Professor always wanted us to: build a better future."</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Stealing a top secret prototype military stealth spaceplane turns out to be less difficult than they had feared.  Some judicious reading of the minds of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a couple of stolen uniforms -- and an <i>awful</i> lot of explaining to Peter what "sneaking around" entails -- later, and they have found it.</p>
<p>The challenge is launching it.  The control room is complex, dozens of different tasks needing to be completed at once.</p>
<p>Or <i>nearly</i> at once.</p>
<p>Peter's mind is hard to read when he's at speed, even more so from the distance between the pilot's seat she's sat in and the control room.  But the simple fact that everything works as it should shows that he's managing it. She wonders what the people in there make of it all, the controls seemingly activating themselves without explanation, the sudden breeze in the tightly controlled room ...</p>
<p>And then he's alongside her, in the other seat.</p>
<p>"This thing is years off being ready," Jean says.  "We're going to be giving it a very accelerated testing programme.  And it wouldn't be able to bring back the Endeavour crew, anyway.  But that's all right, because we know the X-Men are going to do that."</p>
<p>"I wish you'd stop calling them that," Peter says.  "We're the X-Men.  The last of the X-Men."</p>
<p>"That's exactly why.  When we're finished, that won't be true.  So I don't want to think of us that way."</p>
<p>A squad of military police have run out onto the side of the runway.  They level their sidearms at the spaceplane, and Jean prepares herself to deflect the bullets telekinetically, but the need doesn't arise -- from the building behind them comes a man wearing an extremely large number of ribbons on his chest and looking rather out of breath, yelling at them not to risk damaging "the project".  Jean feels oddly flattered that he apparently trusts these thieves to return it in one piece more than his own men.</p>
<p>"Maximum thrust," Jean says calmly, pushing the throttle all the way into position.  The engines behind them -- really, the whole thing is nothing but engines, the small cockpit they're sat in perched between them like a pea nestled between two cucumbers -- roar.</p>
<p>"Are you sure you read that test pilot's mind right?" Peter says, as the acceleration forces him into his seat, but their vehicle remains stubbornly on the ground despite the end of the runway fast approaching.</p>
<p>"And scramjet ... now," Jean says, pressing the switch on the side of the joystick.</p>
<p>There's another kick of acceleration, and suddenly they are airborne, heading rapidly to the edge of space.</p>
<p>"How can something this <i>noisy</i> be stealthy?" Peter asks.</p>
<p>"It's stealthy when it gets to space," Jean says.  "Now let me concentrate, I've never flown at Mach 25 before."</p>
<p>Not far away, she knew, the X-Jet was lifting off, carrying their earlier selves and the others.  And above them, the Endeavour was already in distress.</p>
<p>They weren't there to help with that, though.  The X-Men could handle it on their own.  It was what was going to happen afterwards that mattered.</p>
<p>Watching as history plays out again, the main thing that strikes her is how small everything seems against the immensity of space: the tiny vessels, the frail human bodies, especially her own.  But then, when the Phoenix arrives, it isn't small at all.  It fills her vision, a cloud of flame, but so much more than that as well.</p>
<p>"I have to get out there," Jean says, suddenly.</p>
<p>"Have you <i>completely</i> taken leave of your senses?" Peter says.  "This thing doesn't even have spacesuits!"</p>
<p>He's right, but it doesn't matter, Jean can see that now.  She leans across to kiss Peter, before activating her ejector seat.  It flings her upwards, but of course, she doesn't begin to fall back down.  She frees herself from the straps and carefully aims a kick at the now freely floating seat so that she adjusts her momentum to bring her onto a collision course with her past self.</p>
<p>For a moment, she sees Peter, sees his mouth moving, but of course she can't hear him, and she can't make out the words.  She chooses to decide they are encouragement.</p>
<p>Each of them approaching the point of death, the two Jeans stare at one another, one uncomprehending, the other desperately hoping that she has got this right.</p>
<p>Then the Phoenix consumes them both.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>
  <i>Everything is still, even as the maelstrom surrounds them.  She is in the eye of the storm, the heart of all realities.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>The flickering pillars of flame all around them resolve into sudden clarity: they are more Jeans.  All the Jeans, from all the timelines.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>All the Phoenixes.  These other selves are her wings, as she is theirs.  They have allowed her to soar, will allow her to soar again.</i>
</p>
<p><i>But reality is broken.  That is why she is here.  At the same time: reality is broken </i>because<i> she is here.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>It must be reconstructed, made anew.  That is the core of the Phoenix's being: destruction and creation in one.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>The many Jeans have as long as they need for their work; from some points of view, literally forever.  They are outside time as humans can understand it, their perception of its passing only part of how the Phoenix has constructed this subreality for these new parts of its consciousness.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>She remembers what Erik said: "Is this what the X-Men are for, then? To stand here at the end of it all and say 'No'?"  Perhaps it is; there are so many timelines with unacceptable outcomes, and even she cannot tell any more whether they are unacceptable to <i>her</i>, or to the Phoenix.  Perhaps what the X-Men are for, from its point of view, is to nurture Jean, the vessel into which it can pour itself, so that it can make these decisions, rather than continue on inscrutable instinct alone.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>As they work, Jean and Jean -- and Jean and Jean and Jean, the whole great panoply of them -- begin to merge together, two unreal hands that reach for the same abstract metaphor becoming the same hand, as they winnow down the possibilities.</i>
</p>
<p><i>History will take a new course; one that will involve sacrifice, and pain, because no course that history has ever taken will not.  But there will be hope, as well, the chance of a better tomorrow.  The chance for Xavier's dream to one day be realised: peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants.  A world they </i>all<i> can live in.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>Suddenly, in the very last of the infinite moments available, some strand of the Phoenix that was once the Jean who joined Peter on his desperate flight through time, who made that reckless gamble, reaches into the new timeline and makes the tiniest of adjustments.</i>
</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Scott walks slowly through the trees, in the part of the Estate that has been kept in its original parkland condition.  The walk from the mansion has taken him through the proliferation of accommodation blocks and research labs that have sprung up all around the Institute proper.  The number of people living, studying, working here is numbered in the thousands, mutants and humans alike collaborating in the embodiment of Professor Xavier's dream.</p>
<p>"What took you so long?" Peter says when he arrives.</p>
<p>"You know, I always think it's nice when we walk together," Scott says.</p>
<p>"I know," Peter says.  "But I get so <i>bored</i>.  I could carry you, if you want."</p>
<p>"No, thank you."</p>
<p>They have come to this spot every day for years, except when a mission kept them away from the Estate.</p>
<p>The Artifact, to give it the title the X-Men at large have bestowed upon it, appeared shortly after Jean's apotheosis.  It has defied all analysis by Hank or any other of their most brilliant scientists, and there are so many of them now.  It simply <i>is</i>, a blank white, faintly glowing ovoid that maintains a constant temperature of 92 Fahrenheit, with no way they have understood of doing so.  It nestles under one of the oldest trees on the estate.  Occasionally, one or other of the students leaves something behind after visiting it; Scott and Peter quietly tidy these offerings away when they come, though they have never spoken about why they do so, or what they think the students think.</p>
<p>Scott and Peter know what they think themselves, though.  They have another name for the Artifact.  Privately, between themselves, they call it the Phoenix Egg.</p>
<p>Charles, before he retired to Genosha, charged them -- the X-Men in general, but the two of them in particular -- with keeping it safe.  He never spoke of it directly, but Peter and Scott are as certain that he could detect telepathically what they can only hope in their hearts: that Jean is inside, somehow, in some form.</p>
<p>Scott puts his hand on its side, feeling its strange warmth.  Peter puts his own hand over Scott's.  This is another of the things they do without talking about why.</p>
<p>And then, all of a sudden and slow at the same time, a delicate tracery of orange fire begins to glow beneath the surface.</p>
<p>They look at one another.  "That's never happened before," Peter says.  Scott makes to move his hand away but Peter presses it down harder.  "How do we know we didn't cause it?" he says.</p>
<p>For a moment Scott wants to reply, to berate him for being so certain that whatever change is happening here is a good thing, but he finds he cannot; he feels it too, that this must be a positive development.  As they watch, the lines snaking through the shell -- and Scott is as certain as he has ever been that it <i>is</i> a shell -- begin to join up with one another, expanding so that it seems that just beneath the surface a swirling inferno is taking place.  And yet, the temperature is still the same steady 92 degrees it's always been.</p>
<p>The glow deepens to a brilliant yellow, then white -- not the blank, featureless white it has been all these years, but white-hot.  And then, the shell shatters, fragments flying outwards.  Inside is a human figure.</p>
<p>They peer inside and see that, just as they had hoped, it's Jean. Jean as she was, back then.  Jean as she still is, in their memories.  Jean as she will be, here in the world, again.</p>
<p>Peter and Scott turn to each other, whooping in jubilation, and then they kiss.</p>
<p>"Hey!" comes a voice from beneath them.  Jean has her hands on either side of what is very definitely now a cracked egg, but cannot quite lever herself up.</p>
<p>They break apart.  "Oh, right, sorry," Peter says.  They each take one of Jean's hands and haul her up, placing her carefully down on the ground.  At first Scott thinks she is naked, but then he sees that she is wearing a costume that is at once totally unfamiliar to him and feels completely right for her.</p>
<p>Scott thinks to himself that, once, Jean would have been able to levitate herself out of there under her own power.  Perhaps that day will come again.  Perhaps she already can, and just wanted to feel the two of them holding her, after all this time.</p>
<p>Once she's standing upright by herself, she turns deadly serious.  "What's the date?" she asks.</p>
<p>"The date?"</p>
<p>"The date," Jean affirms.  "Tell me the date."</p>
<p>"The 12th of July," Scott says.  "2000," he adds, realising that what she's really asking is the year.</p>
<p>"Good," she says.  She looks around -- at the clear skies; at the complex, the mansion still at its heart, but so much <i>more</i> now -- and laughs.  "This is good.  Looks like we got it right," she adds, bemusingly.</p>
<p>"I guess we did," Peter says, clearly understanding no more than Scott, but unwilling to leave the silence too long.</p>
<p>Then Jean takes both of their hands in hers, smiling broadly.  "So ... what did I miss?"</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>